


A Family Matter

by Copperheid



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Batdad, Canon Typical Violence, Canon divergence - a death in the family, Gen, Jason never died, Major Character Injury, Will tag other characters as they appear - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 09:56:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18247496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Copperheid/pseuds/Copperheid
Summary: An exploration of how things would have turned out if we'd voted differently.Jason survived. Now he has to learn how to live.





	A Family Matter

A strong wind carried whips of coarse sand through the air, battering his face and distorting the view through his lenses.  _ Not now _ , he thinks. There could not be a worse time for him to be blinded.

Fire roars around him, the heat unbearable in the scorching sunlight. The chemical smell of cordite hangs in the air, as pungent as sticking one's nose in a bottle of acetone - and just as unpleasant. He thought to himself,  _ this is surely hell and this is my torment. _

Shifting glass, wood and sheets of blisteringly hot metal, he searched every inch of the ground not engulfed in flames.  _ I have to find him.  _ Each minute he spends searching through the ashes of the building feels like a year. He imagines himself physically aging with each movement, like his exhaustion were draining away his life force.

Finally, he sees life amongst the rubble. A delicate hand, burnt almost beyond recognition, peeks out at him from underneath a support beam that lay splintered in the desert dust.

A timid hope blooms in his chest as he races to the site of the hand, shoving aside the rubble to reveal the victim caught beneath.

Bruce can’t help but feel disappointed when he sees the victim before him.

Though her brittle platinum curls were greyed with soot and singed, it is unmistakable who lay at his feet, breathing shallowly and bleeding from a large piece of shrapnel imbedded in her side. Sheila Haywood, Jason’s biological mother.

Bruce knew she would not make it. She was pale from blood loss and her eyes, while still open, we glassy. 

Nevertheless, he scooped her crumpled form out of the rubble carefully. She blinked up at him, clearly weak and delirious as he held her in his arms.

“...He turned out...to be...such a...good kid” she struggled to say around the blood in her mouth through laboured breaths. “...He’s...much better...than I deserve...much better...he threw...himself in front...of me...in front of me...he took... the brunt of the blast”

Bruce felt a mix of emotions at her words. His heart swelled at the bravery of his son, but that swelling just made the clench of fear that struck him that much more painful. Jason took the  _ brunt of the blast _ . Bruce had to accept the horrifying reality in that moment that Jason was gravely injured in the explosion. He was likely to be mortally wounded, if not already gone. It was a hard pill to swallow. Bruce would have to act quickly if he wanted any chance of saving his boy.

 

Bruce gently laid Sheila down in the rubble. A pang of guilt struck him for abandoning her in her dying moments, but he had no time to process it. His boy  _ needed  _ him, he could not afford to wait around mourning a woman he did not know. He had to save Jason.

If he had shielded her from the blast like she said, Jason must be close by.

Desperate, Bruce tore apart every inch of the rubble around where he had found Sheila. His heart rate the highest it had ever been, Bruce timed his erratic movements to be in close synchronicity to it.

Finally, as the exhaustion and despair began to trickle in, Bruce saw hope at last in the form of tattered yellow fabric - Jason’s cape.

Before long, Bruce’s frantic machinations revealed the form of a teenaged boy beneath the stone and wood that crushed him.

 

“ _ No _ ” Bruce whispered as he saw the broken form of his son.

 

In all his years of vigilantism, he had never seen such severe injuries on a child. It was enough to turn his stomach as he observed the unnatural way each limb was bent, seeing the bones pushing severely through the charred skin around it. The swelling and burns on Jason’s face made him almost unrecognisable, but the curly dark brown locks atop his bleeding skull were unmistakably his.

Though despite these extensive injuries, Bruce could still see the shallow, weak movement of his chest as he gasped for air.

_ Jason was alive. _

 

Bruce cursed himself as he checked the boy’s pulse, knowing that there was no hospitals near them that would be equipped to deal with such severe injuries, to which Bruce did not even know the full extent. Jason’s pulse was but a weak flutter beneath his fingertips. His boy was  _ dying _ before him and it was dangerous for Bruce to move him, should he possibly further exacerbate the boy’s suffering. Bruce wanted nothing more than to hug him close, to feel the warmth of his embrace again. 

Bruce was concerned deeply by his lack of consciousness, but also felt relief knowing that Jason is better off not experiencing the unimaginable pain his body would be in.

 

With shaking hands, Bruce pressed his finger to his Justice League comm-link to activate it.

“Batman to Watchtower: mayday mayday, requesting immediate emergency extraction to medbay. Male, 15, in critical condition. There’s not much time.”

 

A reply crackled into his ear immediately. “ _Watchtower_ _to_ _Batman_ : _is_ _there_ _still_ _an_ _active_ _threat_ _in_ _the_ _vicinity_?”

 

“The Joker is somewhere nearby but he’s not an immediate threat - to us, at least.”

 

“ _Is_ _the_ _casualty_ _a_ _civilian_?”

 

“No, he’s Robin, my  _ son _ , so stop dicking around and  _ help _ me god dammit! I don’t care about the damn security protocol right now!” Bruce’s irritated voice held a pang of desperation that the operator clearly picked up on.

 

“ _Sending_ _zeta_ _extraction_ _to_ _your_ _current_ _coordinates_ ” The woman’s voice on the other line was terse but relenting. 

 

Bruce was sure to knit his hands into Jason’s tunic just as he was bathed in the orange light telltale of the zeta beam, ensuring that both he and his dying boy would be transported to the watchtower.

 

A flash of darkness tinged with curling, flame-like copper in the corners of his vision momentarily blinds him.

 

Then, as if he’d never been in Ethiopia, Bruce emerges from the beam onto the zeta panel, his boy by his knees. Cordite, ash and decay replaced with the chemically sterile smell of the watchtower medbay. The harsh heat of the African sun and roaring flames now supplanted with cool artificial air. Bruce feels eyes on him, and when he raises his eye-line from Jason’s crumpled body he found the gaze of nine watchtower civilian medics, as well as the few heroes whose minor injuries they were previously tending to.

They weren’t really looking at  _ him _ though. Jason’s condition was hard to ignore.

 

“Please help my boy” he plead the room.

 

In a blur of motion, the medics set to work, doing all they could to stabilise the dying teen.

Jason was placed in a hard neck brace as they worked to carefully move his fragile body. A slur of medical jargon poured from their mouths and while ordinarily, Bruce would be educated enough to decipher what they spoke of, in that moment his blind panic took hold. He could not understand anything they said or did. He just stared through blurry eyes as they tore Jason’s tunic from his chest unceremoniously. The deep purple, red and black that stained his abdomen and chest indicated severe internal bleeding. Bruce could not bare to watch this.

 

\---------

 

Bruce observes a nurse approaching him from the corner of his eye. She seemed timid and nervous - the way most civilian workers on the watchtower tended to behave around him. Whilst normally Bruce held a degree of pride in his intimidating demeanour, knowing that it might impede the quality of his boy’s care struck a chord. He turned to face the nurse suddenly. She jumped, clearly startled.

 

“Anything you need: ask. I want to help.”

 

Despite her dark complexion, Bruce could see her visibly pale under his gaze. “Yes sir. We, um, need your written permission to perform any necessary procedures. And we’ll need his full medical history.”

 

Bruce nodded. Typical that he could only help through filling in paperwork, but perhaps it could help distract him for a moment from the image of Jason’s swollen, burnt face that had been carved into his retinas.

 

“Anything else?”

 

“It seems that the information we have on file for Robin is for somebody else. You said he’s 15 but  _ our _ files say he’s 21…”

 

“You’re looking at the wrong file. That one has retired and taken a new identity. The current Robin’s files should be listed as ‘ _ Robin, J _ ’”

 

Then it occurred to him.

 

“Please tell me you haven’t given him the  _ wrong _ blood transfusion.”

 

The skinny nurse balked, blinking up at him. “N..no! We’re giving him O negative as his blood-type was uncertain.”

 

A wave of relief washed over him. Dick is AB positive, meaning he is a universal recipient. Jason on the other hand can only successfully receive B negative or O negative blood. If they had made the error of mistaking Dick’s file for Jason’s and given him any old blood in the bank, it would be quite likely that Jason’s immune system would attack the transfused blood, causing a whole host of other life threatening problems.

 

The relief hit him in a brief but euphoric wave. “Good. He’s B negative, for future reference. Let me know if you need anything and keep me updated. I’ll…” Bruce cast his eyes over to Jason, who was still surrounded by frantic doctors whose bodies blocked his view. “...get out of the way”

 

\-----------

 

The watchtower was not to be a permanent solution. The doctors on the watchtower, whilst trustworthy and skilled, were not fully equipped for such life threatening injuries. Jason would need several surgeries, and only the best emergency surgeons would do. So it was just a holdover to get Jason’s condition stable enough to be transferred to a hospital in Gotham.

 

Even still, Bruce found himself there for hours. After updating the filing system and filling out several consent forms, every last ounce of adrenaline had been drained out of him.

Clark found him in the cafeteria, slumped on the table and barely containing a sob. Diana was already there, rubbing careful circles on Bruce’s back with surprisingly delicate fingers.

 

Clark could hear Diana ever so softly praying to several gods on the greek pantheon for their help and guidance. To Apollo, to see that Jason heal swiftly and without complication. To Athena - to give his doctors the wisdom and foresight to save him, and to give Bruce strength, and Diana the right words of comfort to say. To Hermes, to see that Jason’s doctors hands be swift and steady, unshaken by nervousness.To Zeus, to ensure that the Joker faces justice for his crimes. To Hypnos, so that Jason may sleep soundly without pain and even to Nemesis, to see that the Joker suffer for his cruelty. All of her prayers were so quiet that Clark doubted they were even heard by Bruce.

 

Clark sat down on Bruce’s other side, placing a steady hand on his shoulder. He could feel Bruce trembling minutely beneath his hand.

 

“He’s strong, B. That kid doesn’t give up easily. He’ll hold on, I know it.” Clark said, trying his best not to let his doubt trickle into his tone. By the defeated sag that settled in Bruce’s shoulders, Clark determined that he must not have been successful. He never had been a good liar.

 

Clark had seen the boys condition when he arrived at the watchtower. It didn’t look good. All but two of his ribs were broken, as well as his skull, collarbone, pelvis, jaw, cheekbone, every bone in his right leg, his right humerus and several of the bones in his hands. Before the explosion, he must have been beaten within an inch of his life with something blunt.

His lung was punctured and his liver and brain were bleeding. He might even need an organ transplant. 

 

Clark had asked Kara to collect Jason’s mother's body from the site and take her to the hospital Jason would be transferred to. If Jason was going to need a new organ, she was by far his best chance for a match. They don’t even know if she’s a registered donor, but it was worth the risk.

 

His skin was also burned from the explosion and subsequent blaze. One of his eyebrows had been burned off, and the left side of his body was practically charred. Clark knew Jason’s left hand was likely to need amputated.

 

Clark could hardly bare to imagine the kind of pain Jason could wake to, if he woke at all.

 

Bruce knew all of this, and Clark could see on his face a kind of despair he’d never even seen before.

 

“C’mon, you’ll need to get changed into civvies for the transfer” Clark offered gently, coaxing Bruce to his feet with a guiding hand. “Your boy needs you to be strong for him. You can do that, right?”

 

Bruce doesn’t say anything, he just nods. Clark can tell he’s trying very hard not to cry.

 

Diana gives Clark a look, standing as well. She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes are begging him to  _ take care of him _ .

 

Clark nods back to her in a wordless promise. No matter what, he would be there for his friend.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading along so far. Let me know what you think, i'd love to hear from you x
> 
> Next chapter is nearly finished and I have some more lighthearted fics in the works too so stay tuned!


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